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Countdown to Counter-revolution

January 13, 2004
The Economist Global Agenda
The Economist

An attempt by Iran's hardline Council of Guardians to ban many pro-democracy candidates from next month's parliamentary elections has caused a storm of protest. Will it all end in victory for the reformists, or repression?

IF A house divided cannot stand, Iran has long been due for collapse. Its two parallel governments, one theocratic, one democratic, have been on the worst of terms for several years. Now the democrats, in the form of the 100 or so members of parliament who are staging a sit-in, which began on Sunday January 11th, seem in a mood for a showdown. In a country ripe for revolution, their action could prove momentous.

Iran has already had one recent revolution—the 1979 rising led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that threw out the shah and ushered in the modern world’s first theocracy. Since then, all the formal levers of power have been held by a supreme religious leader and a coterie of fellow clerics, who take their orders only from God. Iran is, however, a theocracy with a difference: it has democratic features, including an elected president and an elected parliament, or majlis. Hence the two, parallel governments. The cause of their current dispute is a decision by the Council of Guardians, a supervisory body controlled by the clerics, to disqualify several thousand pro-democracy candidates from standing in the general election due on February 20th. Among those disqualified are more than 80 members of the current parliament.

The Iranian presidency issues Mr Khatami's statement on the bans. IRNA, Iran's official news agency, reports on news events. Freedom House, an American pro-democracy think-tank, gives information on civil liberties and political rights in Iran in its report, Freedom in the World 2003. The US Department of State provides information on its relations with Iran. The European Union outlines its relations with the country. “Governments on the WWW” is a comprehensive resource on Iran's government and politics.

Muhammad Khatami, the country’s president, is counselling patience and caution. First elected in 1997 on a reform platform, he embodied the hopes of millions of Iranians who had become fed up with the clerics’ rule, notably the political isolation it had brought Iran, the concomitant economic failures and the social restrictions imposed by rigid adherence to Islamic dogma. Though President Khatami was stymied by conservative mullahs in almost all he tried to do, he was re-elected in 2001 and fellow reformers continued to sweep the polls until last year. But by then the voters were showing signs of disillusion with the failure of the reformers to bring about change. In municipal elections last February, only 10-15% of the electorate in most large cities turned out to vote, handing victory to the conservatives. And since the reformers have proved no more effective since then, a similar result seemed likely next month.

Evidently, though, the Council of Guardians was not prepared to take the risk. From the clerics’ point of view, another vote like last February’s would be an embarrassment, even if it gave them victory: they value the legitimacy that elections bring to the Islamic republic. But a defeat would be worse. Presumably, they calculate that the MPs’ protests will be short-lived, and that Iranians at large have no stomach for a wider upheaval. And they could be right. The disqualified candidates are allowed two further appeals before a final decision is made on February 12th, and the supreme leader himself, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, may yet intervene, though he has said he will do so only when all legal procedures have been exhausted.

Moreover, protests are not uncommon in Iran. Sometimes they come from dissident clerics, sometimes from ordinary people when tempers rise in football crowds or when the police close shops selling illegal videos. More often, though, they come from students. Thus Iran’s universities were convulsed by riots for weeks in November and December 2002, and more protests took place last July. Yet such protests have always passed without significant concessions. Indeed, nearly 18 months have passed since President Khatami threw down the gauntlet by insisting on the passage of two bills, one to rein in the conservative judges who had done so much to nullify his reforms, the other to curb the Council of Guardians, the constitutional watchdog that now threatens even greater emasculation of the majlis. Neither bill has been put into effect, yet Mr Khatami has done nothing to precipitate the crisis he seemed to be calling for. Instead of resigning, he is now calling for calm. It is his brother, a member of the majlis, who appears to be leading the protests.

So the conservatives may get away with it once more. But they face one short-term danger and one longer-term one. Their immediate worry is that the students will be galvanised by the MPs’ sit-in. Many student leaders have been picked off over the years and are now in jail, but new leaders may well arise in their place. The young particularly resent the bans or restrictions on dancing, movies, videos, alcohol, women’s dress and indeed all social mixing of the sexes. And like most Iranians, they hate being citizens of a country considered by George Bush to be part of the “axis of evil”. They know that in their aspirations for democratic change they have the moral support not just of Americans but of Europeans too—Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, criticised the ban on pro-democracy candidates during a visit to Tehran on Monday. And, thanks to watching illicit satellite broadcasts and to keeping in touch with a huge diaspora of Iranians abroad (about 1m in America alone), they are well informed about events outside their country, including the international opprobrium brought about by their country’s nuclear programme.

The longer-term danger for the clerics also lies in the dissatisfaction of the young, but this discontent is not confined to students. Two-thirds of Iran’s 70m people are under the age of 30, and half are under 20. Religious rule has given them an education and, in the right to vote (at 16), a taste of and for democracy. It has not given them jobs, nor can it do so in sufficient numbers to satisfy all those now leaving school unless it allows economic change—including foreign investment—and, inevitably, political reform too. Whether this week’s row ends in climbdown, compromise or crackdown, it will not have banished the prospect of Iran’s next revolution. On the contrary, it will probably have brought it closer.

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